Senza preavviso, né pietà, senza nessun pudore,
muri massicci ed alti mi hanno costruito intorno.
E sono qui che mi dispero e per il mio dolore
non penso ad altro: e mi rodo il cervello tutto il giorno.
James Ensor | The Oyster Eater / La mangiatrice di ostriche, 1882
"The Oyster Eater" is an oil painting executed in 1882 by the Belgian Expressionist artist James Ensor which is now in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.
The genre work depicts the artist's sister Mitche eating oysters on her own at a well-appointed table replete with flowers, plates, wine and table linen.
Art critics were unapologetic about James Ensor's "The Oyster Eater".
"Offensive! Immoral! Vice!"
Yet there is not a streak of nudity to be seen, nor intimately entwined bodies.
So what was the problem?
Anna Boch | Post-impressionist painter
Anna Boch participated in the Neo-Impressionist movement.
Her early works used a Pointillist technique, but she is best known for her Impressionist style which she adopted for most of her career.
A pupil of Isidore Verheyden, she was influenced by Théo van Rysselberghe whom she met in the artistic group, Les XX.
Anna-Rosalie Boch (1848-1936), known as Anna, was a Belgian painter, art collector, and the only female member of the artistic group, Les XX.
Frantz Charlet | Impressionist painter
Frantz Charlet (1862-1928) was a Belgian painter, etcher and lithographer.
An Impressionist, he was one of the founding members in 1882, with James Ensor and Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) of the group Les XX.
It is one of the first painters in Belgium to look for brighter colours and a spontaneous touch, thus becoming closer French Impressionists.
Charlet studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1872-1873 and again from 1876-1881; among his fellow pupils there were Eugène Broerman, François-Joseph Halkett, Théo van Rysselberghe and Rodolphe Wytsman, and his teacher was Jean-François Portaels.
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Théo Van Rysselberghe and Les XX
Théo van Rysselberghe was one of the prominent co-founders of the Belgian artistic circle Les XX on 28 October 1883.
This was a circle of young radical artists, under the patronage, as secretary, of the Brussels jurist and art lover Octave Maus (1856-1919).
They rebelled against the outmoded academism of the time and the prevailing artistic standards.
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